


Breaking the Rules

by GloriaMundi



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: C17, Historical, M/M, POV First Person, post-DMC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-07
Updated: 2006-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-12 14:59:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will doesn't always play by the rules. Set after <i>Dead Man's Chest</i> and before (instead of) <i>At World's End</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking the Rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Backinblack](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Backinblack).



If anyone knows the path to the ... the other world, it's Tia Dalma. I'm not ashamed to admit that she scares me, with her talk of destiny and her black smile and the nasty things she keeps in jars, in her creaking house back in the bayou.

But she seems to believe there's a way to find Jack Sparrow, to bring him back: and I owe that to Jack. To Elizabeth. To myself.

This doesn't look much like the path to the underworld. I'd expected it to be dark and gloomy and narrow, but it's a well-trodden path -- though narrow -- bordered on both sides with little white stones. Off to my right (I've lost all sense of north) there's a tide-line, scattered with clumps of kelp and the pale gleam of ... other things. I try not to look too closely.

There's no sun here to cast shadows, but my shadow's on the path before me. How long has it been there? I put my hand to the hilt of my sword as I walk, and my shadow mimics me. It's reassuring, if anything can be reassuring in this place.

I wish Elizabeth was here. I wish I weren't alone. But if anyone can bring Jack back, it won't be the woman who sent him to his death.

* * *

I've never been so surprised as when the cannibals brought me before their king, and it turned out to be Jack. Jack with his ridiculous face-paint and his swaggering walk and the way he looked at me.

Oh, I was surprised: but there was more to it than that. All year long, as our wedding drew closer, I'd wondered where Jack had got to. Was he still captain of the _Black Pearl_? Had his peculiar blend of madness and brilliance won him riches or death? How had he spent the treasure from Isla de Muerta?

And sometimes, at night, I'd found myself ... asking other questions.

Jack was as infuriating as ever. I explained the situation to him quickly and clearly: Elizabeth imprisoned, and the price of her freedom that damned compass of Jack's. After all, he knew where the Isla de Muerta lay, now: what possible use could he have for the compass?

He could have simply agreed to help: but not Jack Sparrow, oh no.

"Have you considered keeping a more watchful eye on her, eh? Maybe just lock her up somewhere?"

I lost my temper. "She _is_ locked up, in a prison -- bound to hang for helping you!"

I'd hoped to spark a sense of decency, but Jack just said, "There comes a time when one must take responsibility for one's mistakes."

Oh, saving his life had been a mistake, all right. I was furious ... and unarmed. But that latter was easily rectified: I grabbed a sword from the nearest man and advanced on Jack.

"I need that compass of yours, Jack," I said coldly. "I must trade it for her freedom."

He pushed my blade aside with his bare hand, though I could see from the heat in his gaze that his blood was up, too. I wanted to ... I wanted to fight him. But he ignored me: just gabbled some nonsense to Gibbs, who nodded as though Jack were talking sense.

"Let's discuss this further," he said over his shoulder to me, heading aft to his cabin. And like a dog I followed him.

"What are you going to do about Elizabeth?" I demanded as soon as we were private.

"That isn't the question under consideration," said Jack, throwing himself into a chair and propping his heels on the battered table. "The question under consideration, dear William, is what are _you_ going to do about Elizabeth."

"What do you mean?" I said. "We're going to be married. If it hadn't been for you, we'd be married already."

"Marriage," said Jack, drawing the word out in an affected French manner, "is not to be entered into lightly, or less than ... wholeheartedly. And I happen to know, William, that your heart's divided."

"I don't know what you mean!"

"Do you not?" said Jack. Suddenly he was on his feet, in front of me. "So when I do this," and his hot, dirty fingers were pressed against the hollow of my throat, "it doesn't ... disturb you?"

It did disturb me, very much, but I'd be damned if I admitted such a thing.

"Why should it?" I said, plucking his hand away from my skin. Trying not to think of that hand on me. Trying not to remember all the times I'd thought of that hand on me.

* * *

There are dunes rising off to the left, knotted together with tough razor-edged grass. No sign of any water, except the distant frill of white surf from a sea that I can't even hear.

I can't help running through my recent encounters with Jack Sparrow, trying to wring every shred of meaning from each remembered moment. I still can't make sense of the way he betrayed me to Davy Jones. After everything that happened between us on the way to find the _Flying Dutchman_ \-- after the things he said, and worse (better) the things he did -- I can't believe he could just turn his back on me to save his own skin. I thought he felt more for me than that.

Though he did, I'm almost certain, whack me over the head with an oar, back on the Isla des Cruces.

My head aches just thinking about Jack. I roll my shoulders, trying to ease the ache, but my back's tingling. I can't shake the feeling of being watched. And there's a noise, a sort of panting, as though a dog's behind me. A big dog.

I pause, breathing deeply, looking around. The shadows are playing tricks on me. Or perhaps there's simply a patch of darker ground just there, and it's a trick of my mind to make it animal-shaped. I can't imagine the beast that'd cast such a shadow. It would have to have more than one head, for a start. And the way the shadow's growing, it would have to be coming closer ...

"Don't stop," Tia Dalma told me. "Don't you stop on de path, Will Turner, or you regret it."

I start walking again, faster than before, looking straight ahead of me. I can still hear that panting, but it must be my own breath: there's no one else here. I whistle -- not much of a tune to it, but if anyone is listening, they'll see that I'm not afraid. And when I dare to glance down again, that other shadow's gone.

* * *

When I find him, we'll talk. I'll tell him what I want. And I'll ask him what he wants, and listen, even if he tells me that it's Elizabeth he loves. I can't imagine ever forgiving her -- and I'm not even the man she betrayed to his death. But maybe betrayal doesn't matter to Jack the way it matters to me.

I'll tell him that I was wrong in Tortuga, and on the Pearl, that last night, when he put his hand to the hollow of my throat and my heart leapt to meet it. That though I refused his kiss before I went in search of Davy Jones, it was only because I was too proud to admit that I wanted comfort, or anything else that did not come from Elizabeth. That he, Jack Sparrow, he's what I wanted, what I want, and I want whatever he'll give me. That I want his hands on me again, his mouth ... his skin, his tanned skin with its scars and brands and tattoos. His ... his body. I want to see it all. I want it all.

There'll be no reason to stay in Port Royal, and plenty of reasons to leave. We'll sail away -- the _Black Pearl_ was dragged down to the depths (and her captain with her) but we'll find another ship, find or commandeer one -- and roam the oceans. Maybe Jack's right and pirating's in my blood, after all: I find I've a taste for sun and sea and bright steel.

We'll spend our days sailing, adventuring. Maybe, now that Mr Norrington's set for pardon, he'll give us letters of marque, and we can hunt legal prey. (Never mind Barbossa, with his leers and knowing looks: he can go to the devil for all I care.) And we'll spend our nights together in Jack's wide bed, our clothes strewn on the cabin floor ...

I'll let him do whatever he wants. I'll make him show me what it is I want.

* * *

Even the thought of being in bed with Jack Sparrow is having an unfortunate effect on me. With luck there's no one to see as I adjust myself. My spine's still itchy, though, with the feeling that I'm being watched.

The sea's as far away as ever to my right. Surely I've been walking long enough for the tide to have turned, but perhaps there are no tides here. The heaped wrack looks darkly damp, though, and ... and there, not a stone's throw ahead of me, there's a bright splash of colour. Of red.

Even as I tell myself that there's no reason it should be Jack Sparrow -- that not all colour in the world comes from him -- I find that I'm running, sliding on the loose sandy shingle. Soon enough I can see that there's a man lying there on the sand, quite still, a battered hat over his face, a red bandanna (or is it a blood-stained bandage?) round his head. He must be able to hear me running towards him, but he doesn't move at all. He's still as a corpse.

If Jack's dead ... well, of course he's dead. I saw the Kraken drag him down to the depths with his bloody ship. No man could survive that. But if he's dead here ... no matter. I'll take his body back, if that's all I can have.

I'm level with him now, though ten yards of pale sandy beach separate us. Tia Dalma told me not to leave the path, but how else am I going to get to him? I step across the line of white pebbles, holding my breath, but nothing happens.

It's Jack Sparrow, all right. I recognise the way he sprawls on the sand, just the way he was lounging in the straw when I first broke him out of Port Royal gaol. Perhaps he's only --

"Took you long enough," comes that familiar velvet voice from beneath the hat.

"Jack," I say, unable to stop myself grinning like an idiot. "It's really you. You're --"

"Hush," says Jack Sparrow, tipping the hat from his face with a long-fingered hand. Whatever happened to him on the deck of the _Pearl_ , there's no sign of it on his face or his body. He smiles back at me, though there's something rather sad about that smile. "Don't say it, Will."

"Get up," I say. "I've come to take you back."

He raises an eyebrow at my outstretched hand, but otherwise ignores it. "What if I don't want to come back?" he says. "What if I like it here?"

"Like what?" I demand, looking pointedly around. The beach stretches to the horizon in either direction, with the dark tide-mark running down the middle of it. To my right, far away, is the sea. To my left, the curving rise of dunes. "There's nothing here to like."

"Nothing not to like," counters Jack. Oh, this is Jack Sparrow all right, infuriating and impossible. I want to lie down next to him. I want ...

"Tia Dalma said I should bring you back," I say.

"How very public-spirited of her," says Jack. "S'pose she gave you all the usual warnings, eh? Don't stray from the path, don't look back, be humble and courteous? Same old story. Of course, 'twasn't exactly a snake that bit me. Not that there wasn't something serpentine about Davy Jones' fearsome beastie." He illustrates with an expansive gesture. At least he's sitting up now.

"Jack --"

"On the other hand," he says, as though I'm arguing with him, "the snake that bit me's bitten you as well, eh, Will?"

"What on earth are you on about?"

"Elizabeth," says Jack, and there's such a wealth of feeling in his voice that I want to hit him. "Did she tell you of our touching farewell, there on the deck of my precious _Pearl_?"

It's none of his business what Elizabeth told me, or whether I believed her.

"She wants to bring you back, Jack," I assure him. "We all want you to come back."

"Is that so?" says Jack Sparrow, frowning at me. "And what do you want, Mr Turner?"

* * *

That night in Tortuga seemed, still seems, more real than any other night of my life. Jack had left me to stand watch, so he said, while he struck some unsavoury deal with Mr Gibbs. Not that I knew it was Mr Gibbs at the time: no, I thought it was just some filthy degenerate who Jack'd dragged from the nearest pigsty in preference to spending time with me. And that was for the best, wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

I didn't care for Tortuga. The women were wanton, and the men ... the men were worse. Jack swayed through the crowded streets as though nothing could touch him, blithely confident: I shoved and elbowed my way after him, attracting more than my share of insult.

"Aren't we going back to the boat? The ship?" I asked him after one especially vile exchange.

"I thought," said Jack equably, "that you'd prefer to stay ashore tonight. There's pleasurable company aplenty in Tortuga's bowers and boarding-houses."

"No, thank you," I said stiffly.

"As a matter of fact, I wasn't actually offering," retorted Jack. "Though, come to think of it, you might be better off with me than --"

"Shut up!"

Jack just smiled that secret smug smile of his. We were in another tavern by then, rather quieter than the Faithful Bride: I saw Jack deep in conversation with the innkeeper, and some money (where had he got that? I'd thought him penniless) changed hands. Then he was beckoning me over to a doorway, and up a steep and rickety staircase.

"Lodging for the night," he announced. "Less salubrious than you're accustomed to, I'm sure, but you'll have no trouble here."

This turned out to be another of Jack's lies.

He'd drunk enough that I expected him to pass out at any moment: I had no qualms about taking off my boots and climbing into bed beside him. But almost immediately there was hot, spirituous breath on my face, and a hand at my waist, and those stupid beard-braids tickling my throat.

"Sure you won't reconsider, sweet William?" murmured Jack in the darkness. "I'll make it worth your while."

"Get off me!" I cried, shoving him away.

There was a thud as he fell out of the other side of the bed.

"How do you know you don't want it," came Jack's voice, rather sulkily, from the floor, "if you've never had it, eh?"

"I don't want it," I said indignantly. "I don't want you."

"Oh yes," said Jack, and I felt the bed tip under his weight as he climbed back in. He didn't touch me this time, but I could feel the warmth of him, not a foot away from me. "I remember now. You're in love, are you not? With a nicely brought-up wench who won't?"

"Don't you dare speak of Miss Swann like that!"

Jack said nothing more, but he chuckled to himself.

I laid there in the dark, trying to forget that a notorious pirate was at my side. I could hear the regular gust of his breath, and the small sounds of his body -- the graunch of a joint, the rasp as he scratched himself, the slosh of rum in his gut, for Christ's sake -- and I could feel his weight balancing my own as I shifted restlessly.

I could hear his hand sliding over his skin. Hear his breath hitch. The bed creaked, and Jack Sparrow's bare foot touched my leg, and he sighed.

Oh dear Christ, I thought. He's ... he's touching himself.

My whole body ached with holding still, not flinching from that -- surely accidental -- touch. I was trying not to think about what he was doing, what he could feel, but one part of my body, at least, was rapidly taking an interest. He mustn't know. It was nothing to do with him: nothing to do with the warmth, or the dirty musky smell of his skin, or the sure touch of his hand on my body just now.

Jack made a humming noise, soft enough that I'd not have heard it if I hadn't been lying there so still and stiff. I braced myself, thinking that he'd roll against me again, that he'd kiss, that he'd touch ...

I didn't dare touch myself, though I ached for release. He'd know. And though he was making no secret of seeking his own pleasure, regardless of my presence, I wouldn't sink to his level.

I scarcely slept that night, even once Jack's breath had gusted and steadied and he was curled on his side, his back to me. How could I sleep, with the warmth and the smell and the weight of him so close, making me want things that I'd never even thought of 'til then?

* * *

I've gone over and over that night in my thoughts, lying in my own safe solitary bed. I've wondered what would have happened if I'd let Jack Sparrow -- brave, unique, oddly honourable Jack Sparrow -- kiss me. I've wondered, in considerable detail, what else he would have done. I've even thought of some things that I might have liked him to do.

Oh, I've never said anything to him. He's been gone from my life for a year or more, and when we met again on the island of the cannibals, there wasn't much opportunity for conversation. But that night before the bayou, when he set his hand to me and asked me what I wanted -- I can't stop thinking of that. I wish that, just once, I had set aside my fear and denial and let him kiss me.

For one thing, he'd have to be quiet when he was kissing, and I can't imagine anything else that would shut him up. Now he's reclining there in the sand, propped up on his elbows, rambling on about some Greek fellow. I've heard a bit about the Greeks, and the sort of things they got up to. Maybe I should be flattered -- fascinated -- that Jack's thinking about the Greeks while he's with me: but I'm simply aching to be alone with him, back in the world of the living.

"-- and if he'd stuck to the rules, which are consid'rably more than guidelines in this particular instance --"

"Jack," I interrupt, "will you come back with me?"

"And what profit would there be in that for me, young William?" says Jack, and his eyes are hard and deep and black as death.

I don't know how to answer that, not in words. But I drop to my knees beside him, and put my hand on the warm solid curve of his face, and lean close.

"Are you trying to ... persuade me, Will?" murmurs Jack, his mouth close enough to mine that I can feel the shape of each word.

When I kiss him, it's strangely unsatisfying. Oh, it feels strange in other ways: the bristle of his moustache and beard against my face, the sharp sourness of the gold in his mouth, the taste that's so different to the clean sweetness of Elizabeth's kiss. But it's not all it should be, and by the way he draws back, he feels the lack too.

"I've been thinking of that for a long time," I confess.

"Kissing a dead man?" says Jack. Perversely, his good humour's restored, and he smiles broad and wicked at me. "By my reckoning, Will, it'll be a sight better once I'm alive again."

"You'll come with me?" I bite my lip as he grins.

"Oh, I'll ... come with you, Mr Turner," says Jack Sparrow, positively fizzing with innuendo. Though I redden, I can't help but grin back at him. "What are we waiting for, eh?"

* * *

I don't know what will become of Elizabeth. Perhaps she'll marry Mr Norrington, after all. Or Lord Beckett. Or Davy Jones, for all I care. Something died in me when she told me what she'd done, how she'd killed Jack.

Never mind Elizabeth. Never mind any of 'em. When everything's over, I'll go to Jack and tell him that I want to be with him, to go with him. (To come with him, oh Christ.)

We'll make our farewells and go. I've nothing much to leave behind -- though I don't know how I'll explain this to my father. I don't really know where we'll go, or how, or in what company.

But I'll be with Jack, and he with me. And that first night when we're alone, I'll kiss him properly, fierce and warm and keen, 'til we're both breathless. I'll put my hands on him, slide my hands under his shirt, feel the scars and the smoothness. Does a tattoo feel different to unmarked skin? I want to find out.

I'll make him take off his shirt, or maybe I'll take it off him myself. I'll strip for him: I want to see his face as I lay myself bare. I want to see his body ... his cock, rising for me. I want to touch it. I want to kiss him everywhere, not just on his mouth.

I want to spend myself at his touch. I want to feel him all around me. I want, oh, would he put his mouth to me?

And there are other things, the Greek sin, the sins of Sodom. Will he want to do them? Will I? I think I will.

I don't yet know everything that two men can do together, but I'll learn. Jack'll teach me. We'll sweat and gasp and spend together, we'll fall asleep pressed against one another, and wake and do it all over again.

* * *

We're walking along the beach, back the way I came. No one's tried to stop us leaving: we are alone here. There's no change in the air, the sky, the distant sea. Jack, just behind me -- the path isn't wide enough for two to walk abreast, and he's almost superstitiously unwilling to walk outside the double line of white stones -- won't stop talking: he sounds almost feverish.

"... and then, of course, there's the bit about being torn apart by a baying pack of females," he's saying.

"I thought they usually just slapped you," I say, laughing.

"It could happen," says Jack, affronted. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"What, not the first time that you'd been torn apart by women?" I say. "Don't talk nonsense, Jack: if you were torn apart by anything, it was the Kraken."

I don't know whether that was the right thing to say, whether I should have reminded him that he is, in fact, dead. I'm afraid that if I turn and look at him, I'll want to kiss him again. And anyway, when I stopped before, there was that shadow, and that noise ... Though I feel a great deal braver now that I'm with Jack Sparrow, now that we've an accord.

"Did I say it'd happened to me, Will?"

"I don't know." I can scarcely remember what we were talking of. "You've said a lot: I've lost track."

"Haven't had anyone to converse with for quite a while," Jack reminds me. "And it's unpleasantly quiet here, as you'll have noticed on your way down."

Down? The beach is as level as a table.

"We're not really conversing," I point out. "You're talking, and I'm listening."

"We could sing," suggests Jack. "I know an excellent song. Taught to me by your bonny lass, as it happens."

"Oh, let me guess," I say, rolling my eyes. "How'd it go? 'We're devils and rascals and really bad eggs, drink up my hearties yo ho.'"

"Lovely singing voice you have there, mate," says Jack. I can hear the leer in his voice. "Are you sure you're not --"

"Yes, thank you," I say, "I'm quite intact." And I can't resist adding, "Wait 'til we're ... 'til we're back, and I'll prove it." I'm grinning at the thought of his reply, as much as the notion of ... showing myself to Jack.

But there isn't a reply.

"Jack?" I say, slowing.

Nothing. I glance back over my shoulder.

His mouth's moving, but I can't hear what he's saying; only a faint whisper of sound like the wind (but there's no wind) over the sand. He looks ... angry. And he's fading, somehow: the red of his bandana is less bright, his eyes like empty spaces in a mask, his open mouth an O of darkness without any glimmer of gold. Behind him, through him, I can see the pale beach and the dark line that marks high tide. It's coming clearer. Jack is not behind me any more.

* * *

I'll tell them he wouldn't come. Or that I couldn't find him.

I'll tell Elizabeth that the price was too high. I'll tell Tia Dalma that Jack had a different path to follow. I'll tell Norrington that Sparrow chose the honourable course.

I'll tell myself, night after night, that I should never have looked back. I should never have broken the rules.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Written for _backinblack_ for the POTC Secret Santa, 2006


End file.
